Actually, even in computer science, there are many sub-fields where 100 pages of reading and comprehension a week is entirely warranted. Off the top of my head, security, software engineering, programming languages, operating systems (depending on priorities), robotics, vision, and artificial intelligence. Granted, I'd have trouble coming up with that much reading for introduction to programming (where all that time should be spent actually coding) or algorithms (where it should be spent deriving), but I digress.
And I stand by my earlier observation that if one's course load is too much for them to handle, they should drop back. Some topics (even within a discipline that also covers "easier" topics like you mention) require a lot more work than others to gain proficiency. Other times, people may not have learned the necessary starting material. This is why we have prerequisites, but from experience, if students did not see it as useful when they took it, they might have passed the pre-req without the required degree of understanding. This leaves them scrambling to catch up the whole time they are in a course that depends on earlier material.
I didn't mean to come off as arrogant. Gaining real understanding is very difficult. And all of us occasionally take on too much. Sometimes you just need to recognize this and limit yourself to what you can handle. I got my butt kicked a couple of times before I learned that lesson myself.